Current position

Maartje Stols lectures paintings conservation and coordinates the paintings conservation master specialty at UVA . Stols’ research specialism is the investigation of historical artists’ recipes and their reconstruction with ‘historically informed’ materials. Her PhD (2014) investigates historical recipes for preparatory layers for oil paintings in NW Europe (University of Amsterdam).

Stols is core team member of the PAinT Project, PAinT standing for Paint: Alterations in Time. The multi-disciplinary team of this NWO sponsored research project inside the Science4Art Programme, consists of conservators, conservation scientists, computational scientists and chemists. They cooperate with major Dutch museums and international research partners to investigate ageing, deterioration and migration processes in oil paints related to pigment-binding medium interactions. In this project, reconstructions, scientific experiments on mature oil paint model systems are linked to instrumental analysis of paintings. The PAinT project aims to provide an improved scientific basis to guide future conservation strategies.

Stols' project 'Restoration recipes' has been selected by the Amsterdam University Fund as one of the four 'Jaarfonds' fundraising projects for 2014.

Short biography

Stols obtained a BA and MA in Art History at the University of Leiden and subsequently studied Conservation of paintings and painted objects at the post-graduate programme of the Limburg Conservation Institute in Maastricht. She specialised in the structural conservation of panel paintings during a six-month internship at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge. Stols has worked as a paintings conservator in The Mauritshuis, The Hague, in several private studios in the Netherlands, and has her own private conservation practice. As researcher of historical paint recipes, Stols has acted as research associate in the HART Project, HART standing for Historically Accurate Reconstruction Techniques (project leader: Dr. L. Carlyle). The HART Project was part of the De Mayerne Programme, a multi-disciplinary five year research programme in the Netherlands, sponsored by NWO. Stols has been lecturer paintings conservation at the UvA and coordinator for the MA programme for the paintings specialty since 2007.

Recent research interests include: historical restoration recipes; the effects of conservation treatments on the chemical balance inside the paint system; the role of historical recipes in the education of artists, i.e. the dissemination of artistic knowledge through recipe books.

2015

Stols-Witlox, M. (2015). 'By no means a trivial matter': The influence of the colour of grounds layers on artists’ working methods and on the appearance of oil paintings, according to historical recipes from North West Europe, c. 1550-1900. Oud - Holland, 128(4), 171-186. DOI: 10.1163/18750176-90000218[details]

Stols-Witlox, Maartje (speaker) (5-6-2014): ‘ “Experience will be your best master” Investigating the relevance of written recipes for preparatory layers for oil paintings, with special focus on ground colour.’, Historians of Netherlandish Art Conference, Boston.

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